Re: problem with ux400

[magerman@linc.cis.upenn.edu]

     As a former staffer for Software Support, it used to irk me to see bug
     reports copied to SLUG, because it suggests that you don't have
     confidence in Symbolics' ability to solve their own problems.  At least

I have every confidence the questions will be answered.  I just can't wait
until the machine is obsolete before I get an answer.  Frequently, the
questions are problems that someone else must have encountered, or can quickly
answer.  Spending more than a few days debugging such a problem is wasteful,
and waiting a few months (which is the quickest *I* have ever received a
response from software support) is unacceptable.

     give them a chance to fix the problem before you publicize it to the
     users' group!  If it's a really severe problem and you don't get a
     timely response, prevail on their sales rep (if you can find one) to get
     some attention to the problem.  If that doesn't help, *then* let SLUG
     know about it.

     It seems to me that technical questions and/or statements like the
     following are appropriate to be copied to SLUG:

      - Does anyone have a hack to do this?
      - Major problem alert!
      - Help! Symbolics couldn't find a timely answer for this
     bug/misfeature.

     Does this seem unreasonable?

      -- Chucko

Yes, it does.  It is frustrating when you are trying desperately to remain
with an obviously useful and powerful machine, but can't even get the thing to
run without crashing and can't get timely responses to problems.  I no longer
use Symbolics machines for most of my work because I couldn't hold off my work
until the ux400 arrived and started to work right.  I would rather malloc()
and free() than CONS and wait.

Someone suggested that a new news group be started for communicating
questions and problems.  I can't believe that this isn't one of the
purposes of slug.  But if it isn't, then a new group should be formed.
Getting a new symbolics product always seems to require alot of tweaking,
and I personally would rather hear about it from someone who's already
done it than spend all my time reproducing the effort.  I would certainly
reciprocate.

-- David Magerman
Unisys CAIT, Spoken Language Systems
(Formerly University of Pennsylvania LINC Laboratory)

*** The opinions expressed above are my own and do not represent the views
of the University of Pennsylvania, the LINC Lab staff, or Unisys.      ***